Great adaptations that got it all wrong.

[PyroChamber]

What are some great movie adaptations that you think, while great, completely missed the point of what the original material was all about?

Whether they be adapted from books, comics, TV shows, cartoons, other movies, etc.

[Kurosawa]

I guess the Shining would qualify as that. It's quite different from the novel in a number of ways.

[DACrowe]

Not all of these are great movies--but they're all at least good, if piss poor adaptations of the books/plays on which they were based....

-The Wizard of Oz (1939)
-The Shining
-Jurassic Park
-Bram Stoker's Dracula (Coppola's 1992 version)
To Have, Have Not
-Hamlet (Franco Zefferelli/Mel Gibson's 1990 version)
-Batman Returns
-V For Vendetta
-Blade Runner
-The Little Mermaid

There are more. But I think all of these movies are good (WOZ, JP and BR are great), but none of them are very faithful to their literary sources.

[TenFold]

Revolutionary Road
American Psycho

[Wesley Dodds]

If you're in a good mood then Constantine is a decent enough dumb action movie but as a Hellblazer adaptation it pretty much failed to understand ANYTHING about the source material.

[Ipodman]

I love Jurassic Park... but the book is vastly different.

[bullets]

I guess the Shining would qualify as that. It's quite different from the novel in a number of ways.


That immediately came to mind. I think Stephen King had issues with some of those changes but he probably approves of it now.

[childeroland]

I don't know if The NeverEnding Story completely missed the point, but by doing only the first half of Michael Ende's great book, Wolfgang Petersen didn't get to a lot of Ende's themes.

Disney's Alice in Wonderland and Carroll's books have little in common aside from basic plot and characters.

Yeah, definitely The Wizard of Oz.

Malick's The Thin Red Line at least comes close to this.

[cherokeesam]

The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Both masterstrokes of cinema verite, to be sure, but their art lacked a certain je ne sais quoi

[Franklin Richards]

Dune.


Great David Lynch movie. Horrible Dune movie.


:doom: :doom: :doom:

[8wid]

The Harry Potter movies after Chamber of Secrets.

[Sawyer]

The Shining. I love it, but Kubrick kind of butchered the novel.

[TheDreamMaster]

Jurassic Park at least had the basic premise down. The Lost World on the other hand...

[Ponyboy]

Someone mentioned The NeverEnding Story. Yes indeed... while I love the film for what it is, it's markedly different from the book. I'd have to crack open the book, but I believe the film only covers roughly half of the novel. The entire bit where Bastian travels to Fantastica is left out (though I think partially covered in NE Story II). It's a great shame really, because the novel is a beautiful story.

[redhawk23]

I disagree that Blade Runner missed the point. Its different certainly and ignores some of the themes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, however I've always felt that the book and film compliment eachother well.

This evidenced by the fact that reportedly Dick recieved the workprint of Blade Runner that he saw quite well where as Stephen King hates the shining. Its all matter opinion of course but certain point were brought across and adapted.

[Rowsdower!]

Someone mentioned The NeverEnding Story. Yes indeed... while I love the film for what it is, it's markedly different from the book. I'd have to crack open the book, but I believe the film only covers roughly half of the novel. The entire bit where Bastian travels to Fantastica is left out (though I think partially covered in NE Story II). It's a great shame really, because the novel is a beautiful story.

Yes, that is true. I wonder... could (or should) a closer adaptation of the book be made?

I know everyone hates the idea of remakes, but I think that a new Neverending Story film that sticks closer to the book and employs modern special effects could really be quite a spectacle. And I love the original film. I probably watched it 100 times as a kid.

[CGHulk]

Gone With the Wind

[Happy Jack]

The Shining is probably the best example, because it manages to be an incredible film on its own while still being technically a lousy adaptation of the novel. At least in terms of the events depicted.

[Rowsdower!]

I'd say the first and the third (and possibly fourth) Mission:Impossible movies were somewhat poor adaptations of the TV series but were still great spy movies (the second one was just pure crap). While the TV series was was a team series through and through, the movies focus more on one superagent who just needs a few other people to help in a couple situations. Also, the only character carried over from the original series was Jim Phelps, and well... let's just say he was DRASTICALLY changed in the movies.

[Ultimatehero]

I'd say the first and the third (and possibly fourth) Mission:Impossible movies were somewhat poor adaptations of the TV series but were still great spy movies (the second one was just pure crap). While the TV series was was a team series through and through, the movies focus more on one superagent who just needs a few other people to help in a couple situations. Also, the only character carried over from the original series was Jim Phelps, and well... let's just say he was DRASTICALLY changed in the movies.

Same happened in SWAT. Not saying it's a great adaptation, entertaining but characters really changed a lot.

[moviedoors]

American Psycho
I disagree with that. The movie has its flaws, but it still touches on all of the major themes in the book; apathy, vanity, misogyny, selfishness, greed, lack of identity.

The first thing that sprung to mind when I saw the thread title was First Blood. Maybe not a great movie, but a solid one. It has good acting, very well staged action, and a nice atmosphere.

And it completely and utterly misses the point of the book.

The film is firmly on John Rambo's side. Will Teasle is the over-the-top villain. Rambo just wants to be left alone, and he doesn't want to hurt anyone. If society could just leave him alone.

Rambo's side of it is in the novel, and we most certainly feel sympathy for him. But he's not the hero. There is no hero. John Rambo is a deeply troubled individual. He's deliberately defiant at the beginning, to the point where we can't blame Teasle for having to up the stakes, even though Teasle was being to drunk on power.

Rambo kills people. And though from a certain point of view, it's self defence, he really does commit some heinously cold acts of violence, sniping first the tracker dogs and then the police themselves. He'll go as far as to stalk, corner, and kill a cop from behind.

Teasle is just as much a protagonist as Rambo. He makes some poor choices at the beginning, but once things escalate, you have a better, more empathetic understanding of why he does what he does. For much of the novel, he's driven by unbearable guilt for having carelessly set off this wild animal. It's what drives him to so ruthlessly pursue putting Rambo down.

It's a novel about the hopeless means of violence, about hardheadedness, about hubris, about damage. It's an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. It's a metaphor for the Vietnam War.

[Rowsdower!]

Same happened in SWAT. Not saying it's a great adaptation, entertaining but characters really changed a lot.

Never saw that (the TV show or the movie). Were either any good?

[DACrowe]

I disagree that Blade Runner missed the point. Its different certainly and ignores some of the themes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, however I've always felt that the book and film compliment eachother well.

This evidenced by the fact that reportedly Dick recieved the workprint of Blade Runner that he saw quite well where as Stephen King hates the shining. Its all matter opinion of course but certain point were brought across and adapted.

The point of the book was androids cannot be human and that our future is a desolate inhuman/artificial one. In Ridley Scott's film the androids are more human than the actual humans who are depicted as fascist villains who hunt them down. The end raises the point of what is humanity and what is a soul as Roy had more of one than Decker did at that point. Decker falls in love with an android which goes against the very concept Dick came up with....but I prefer Blade Runner.

Also, Dick only saw work footage of the big special effects and city shots. He never saw the completed narrative. He was blown away by the visual realization of his story, this is true.

[DACrowe]

Gone With the Wind

Really? They cut out one of her kids and wisely marginalized a lot of the KKK stuff, but it was a pretty faithful adaptation that the author clearly adored as much as the audiences did.

[Rowsdower!]

I disagree with that. The movie has its flaws, but it still touches on all of the major themes in the book; apathy, vanity, misogyny, selfishness, greed, lack of identity.

The first thing that sprung to mind when I saw the thread title was First Blood. Maybe not a great movie, but a solid one. It has good acting, very well staged action, and a nice atmosphere.

And it completely and utterly misses the point of the book.

The film is firmly on John Rambo's side. Will Teasle is the over-the-top villain. Rambo just wants to be left alone, and he doesn't want to hurt anyone. If society could just leave him alone.

Rambo's side of it is in the novel, and we most certainly feel sympathy for him. But he's not the hero. There is no hero. John Rambo is a deeply troubled individual. He's deliberately defiant at the beginning, to the point where we can't blame Teasle for having to up the stakes, even though Teasle was being to drunk on power.

Rambo kills people. And though from a certain point of view, it's self defence, he really does commit some heinously cold acts of violence, sniping first the tracker dogs and then the police themselves. He'll go as far as to stalk, corner, and kill a cop from behind.

Teasle is just as much a protagonist as Rambo. He makes some poor choices at the beginning, but once things escalate, you have a better, more empathetic understanding of why he does what he does. For much of the novel, he's driven by unbearable guilt for having carelessly set off this wild animal. It's what drives him to so ruthlessly pursue putting Rambo down.

It's a novel about the hopeless means of violence, about hardheadedness, about hubris, about damage. It's an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. It's a metaphor for the Vietnam War.

Wow, that sounds really good. Now I have to read the novel. I never knew it was so drastically different from the film.

[craigdbfan]

The point of the book was androids cannot be human and that our future is a desolate inhuman/artificial one. In Ridley Scott's film the androids are more human than the actual humans who are depicted as fascist villains who hunt them down. The end raises the point of what is humanity and what is a soul as Roy had more of one than Decker did at that point. Decker falls in love with an android which goes against the very concept Dick came up with....but I prefer Blade Runner.

Also, Dick only saw work footage of the big special effects and city shots. He never saw the completed narrative. He was blown away by the visual realization of his story, this is true.

Not to mention the entire Mercer subplot.

[Speedball]

Wizard of Oz

The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum - The plot of the books is completely different than films.

[TruerToTheCore]

Conan The Barbarian (Arnold version)
The Running Man

[GunRanger]

It's a metaphor for the Vietnam War.
So was the movie. Rambo goes to meet his friend, but he's dead from cancer caused by Agent Orange. Then the cops treat him like **** because of who he is, and because he was a veteran of Vietnam. It's why Rambo breaks down at the end too. Him attacking the city, was his way of bringing the Vietnam war home. He used guerrilla tactics versus the cops who happen to wear military fatigues in the dense forests and carry M4s. What sort of cops do that? Then he blows up the town.

[cherokeesam]

Just to take the opposite approach to things: there's one movie that I found that was an *extremely* faithful adaptation. I found that The Silence of the Lambs followed the novel practically word for word. If you get the novel and the DVD, try reading along with the film sometime --- you're practically reading the script.

I remember being pleasantly surprised by that, and to this day, I still wonder that more filmmakers don't show that same kind of faith in novelists. It worked great for Demme.

[the amazing fro]

Being an ultra faithful adaption can work against you in some cases. Watchmen was a pretty close adaption often taking panels right from the comics. But it didn't work because it felt too much like an add on to the book and not a separate entity in its own right.

[KenK]

John Carpenter's Vampires - I LOVE this movie, but it's so removed from the novel, John Carpenter have every right to put his name on it like it was his! Outside of James Woods' character and a crew of vampire hunters funded by the Vatican, the two really are nothing alike.

[moviedoors]

So was the movie. Rambo goes to meet his friend, but he's dead from cancer caused by Agent Orange. Then the cops treat him like **** because of who he is, and because he was a veteran of Vietnam. It's why Rambo breaks down at the end too. Him attacking the city, was his way of bringing the Vietnam war home. He used guerrilla tactics versus the cops who happen to wear military fatigues in the dense forests and carry M4s. What sort of cops do that? Then he blows up the town.
It's a clean, PC, Hollywood version of a Vietnam message, with none of the difficult moral complications of the novel. One has clearly drawn lines of honorable good guys and unreasonable bad guys, right and wrong. The other treats the proceedings as ugly, bloody, physically and emotionally harrowing for all involved, and there is no good guy and there is no bad guy, just a lot of nothing getting solved violently. When you're part of a massacre, there is no honor. Which way of telling the story has more real-world resonance? Not the one with the hero and the mustache twirling villain.

I don't want to get into specific spoilers, but the ending sees these ideas out much more honestly in the novel too. Let's just say the fate of these two men wasn't so Tinseltown and it was exactly how it should have ended. The ending of the novel might not have worked in the movie. The movie played with a stacked deck and such bleak nihilism wouldn't have fit with its simpler characters.

[Steyin]

Watchmen, to a point.

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

If we're going by more than changes to the story and focusing on changes to themes, the Shining certainly counts.

The Shining is about a deeply flawed man trying his damnedest to get his life together and to be a good father, but the external demons in the Overlook compound his internal ones.

The Kubrick version is about a guy who is already bit of an unstable douche getting just a tiny prod in that direction. That and how it seems like Kubrick shot it so that it made it seem ambiguous as to whether the ghosts had anything at all to do with his downward spiral. The characters weren't all that likable, going against the whole point of the story, as well.

[Asr]

War of the Worlds (1953 or 2005 - for anyone who actually likes the 2005 movie anyway)

The '53 version is a sci-fi classic but vastly differed from the book. A faithful adaptation of the book would be seriously awesome.

[Lighthouse]

History of Violence.

[CashforStash]

Jaws.

There I said it.

[The Navigator]

From what I hear, the book Die Hard is based on has the hero as a much more Schwarzeneggerian type of protagonist...which was pretty much 180 from the direction the movie took.

[Lighthouse]

Jaws.

There I said it.

Jaws the movie is vastly superior to the book.

[Dave McFly]

John Carpenter's Christine, I have read the Stephen King book 2 times and while I LOVE the movie (being a car guy), the book is a lot different than in the movie here are a few examples off the top of my head:

Arnie buys the car in the very beginning of the book the whole school scenes and the fight with Buddy is almost a 1/3rd of the way in

Arnie buys the car from the original owner Roland D Lebay not his brother like in the movie

Christine does not really drive herself but more like driven by the spirit of the deceased Lebay.

the deaths are a bit different in the book, Christine chases after Buddy and a few of his buddies that are in the car with him they crash and flip over and only Buddy survives but Christine runs his ass down. Darnell's death in the book is far cooler, Christine crashes into his house at night and slams into the stairs as he is trying to escape.

Christine has to be moving for her to 'regenerate' cause of the backwards moving odometer, so the first thing that gets damaged in a chase is the last thing that gets fixed. and on top of that the descriptions of her 'regenerations' are cool like one scene she 'regrows' a missing hood a new one 'knits' itself out of raw metal and the red paint soaks into it like a bandage over a bloody wound.

And the final showdown is not with a bulldozer but a pink septic truck named 'Petunia'

still I LOVED the movie and would SO get it on blu ray to replace my 8 year old copy of the special edition DVD.

[geeknerddork]

Akira. The anime condensed 6 thick volumes into 120 minutes, and thus cut out lots of important/cool stuff, but it's still an animation classic that's typically cited as one of the best anime films ever.

[moviedoors]

Jaws the movie is vastly superior to the book.

Yeah, it's not even close.

[craigdbfan]

Akira. The anime condensed 6 thick volumes into 120 minutes, and thus cut out lots of important/cool stuff, but it's still an animation classic that's typically cited as one of the best anime films ever.

I agree.

The manga is vastly superior. That doesn't make me love the anime movie any less because it's still incredible in its own right but the manga which is also written by Otomo you'll find yourself far more invested in the characters and everything thats at stake.

The anime had to really be relatively brief on these points so the relationship mainly sticked with that of Kaneda and Tetsuo.

Great movie still but its hardly that faithful to the manga due simply to the limited time they had to cram a story that Otomo wasn't even done with at the time in manga form.

[kedrell]

Total Recall

[craigdbfan]

Starship Troopers.

[geeknerddork]

I agree.

The manga is vastly superior. That doesn't make me love the anime movie any less because it's still incredible in its own right but the manga which is also written by Otomo you'll find yourself far more invested in the characters and everything thats at stake.

The anime had to really be relatively brief on these points so the relationship mainly sticked with that of Kaneda and Tetsuo.

Great movie still but its hardly that faithful to the manga due simply to the limited time they had to cram a story that Otomo wasn't even done with at the time in manga form.

Yeah, I saw the anime first, and it's one of my favorite films ever, but it kinda confused me the first time around even though I thought it was awesome. Then I read the manga years later and it made more sense.

I've always thought it could've been better as a trilogy of movies. They could've gotten everything in. They're doing an Americanized live-action remake, and I'm dreading that, all the news about it sounds horrible so far, haha. They want to make the characters adults, and white guys, and in New York. Ugh.

[dark_b]

sorry but i have to do this. this is SHH

The Dark Knight :lmao:

[craigdbfan]

sorry but i have to do this. this is SHH

Batman & Robin :lmao:

fixed

[mongoose-mania]

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had plenty of things that were different or left out from the books, but that's what happens when you try to squeeze six books into nearly two hours. Still, I love that movie.

[amazingfantasy15]

Wizard of Oz

The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum - The plot of the books is completely different than films.

I'd add The Bourne Identity to the mix as well. The movies were good, but had next to nothing to do with the books.

Conan The Barbarian (Arnold version)
The Running Man

The Running Man is a good pick, while the Arnold movie is cheesy '80s fun, I would like to see this remade to resemble the book more. Could be a very good movie.

[redhawk23]

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had plenty of things that were different or left out from the books, but that's what happens when you try to squeeze six books into nearly two hours. Still, I love that movie.

There were many changes, some things were rearranged and used elsewhere.

Ultimately though I think it got the spirit, the story and the point across, along with much of the imagery while not being slavish to it. In short did what an adaptation is supposed to do. I hardly see how it belongs in this thread at all.

Also they only had a very basic description of the ending to go off of when making the film. The last book came out, what 2, 3 weeks before the movie?

[mongoose-mania]

You're right; it didn't get it all wrong, it just did what it needed to do to translate to the screen better.

James and the Giant Peach, on the other hand, got everything wrong. I love the animation and Henry Selick's direction, but I feel like they took a little too much liberty with the story.

[mclay18]

The Harry Potter movies after Chamber of Secrets.

I have a feeling you haven't seen DH parts 1 & 2. Those are pretty close adaptations of the book after the first two movies.

As for movies 3-6, you have to omit and change some stuff around. To be fair, some of the key crucial elements were omitted and reinserted back into the final two movies once the filmmakers realized how important they were. I have to say Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix nicely condensed the books down to their essence.

[Mr. Wooden Alligator]

The Dark Knight. :bdh: